


Grief Makes A Deserter

by MandoKain



Series: Aliit [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Explosions, Gen, Loss, Prequel, Swearing, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, War is hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 12:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20191975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MandoKain/pseuds/MandoKain
Summary: He hadn’t meant to scream.“Seems so wrong, I know myself. If I had seen you there, I’d’ve been overwhelmed but it got away from me.” (Solar Eclipse - Jim and the Povolos)Also a flashback, this time to when Blink lost his squad. Content warnings on this chapter for death, violence, blood/gore.





	Grief Makes A Deserter

He’d come to slowly, aching, but alive. His head was ringing, and it took him several seconds to actually open his eyes. Blink groaned softly, hardly able to hear it over the ringing in his ears and his own pounding heartbeat. Pulling his helmet off didn’t really help much. The helmets did have sound dampeners, of course, but even those had their limits, and being that close to an explosion of that magnitude was going to-

The explosion. 

_Oh, gods._

Blink rolled over and pushed himself to his hands and knees, before getting to his feet. His mind had gone white with dread, and he didn’t want to turn.

He had to. 

It was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Infiltrating a separatist stronghold had been nothing compared to the effort it took to turn around, force his feet to move under him as the ice in his head slid down into his stomach. _Oh gods. Oh, gods, please_...

The scream left his throat without his meaning it to. It was the first sound above the ringing in his ears that he’d actually registered, and it sounded broken, even to him. He sank to his knees, the tears unstoppable no matter how good his training was.

He’d been at the back. He’d been covering their rear, while the others were farther ahead. Even so the explosion had thrown him backwards and slammed him into the ground so hard he’d blacked out. He was alive.

The others were not.

Two were in pieces. 

The third simply lay still. 

Blink had done all the training: tight spaces, interrogation, torture simulation, crawling through rancid bantha guts with no helmet, everything. He’d held fast, been strong, steady, steel. He’d done brilliantly and passed with flying colors. None of that could ever have prepared him for this.

Blink turned to one side and threw up.

The Commando swallowed a few times, trying to get the foul taste from his tongue. He wiped his mouth, then got up, his breathing shaky. He made his way first to the one just lying still. As he approached, he saw the dark pool around the body, and the chunk of shrapnel embedded in the clone’s throat. He was dead. He’d probably bled out while Blink was unconscious. Blink felt the bile rise in his chest again and forced it down. Then he moved on, to where the first two lay strewn across the ground. One, the second in line, lay outside the crater, his arm and a leg no longer attached. Some of the shrapnel was still embedded in the armor, which had caved into his chest, certainly killing him. It would have been fast, at least. He wouldn’t have died choking on his own blood or felt his limbs torn from his body.

The last was scattered. He’d been the first in line. Blink could see the lower section of a leg, a gloved hand, what looked like a section of shoulder still wearing its massive pad. The body had been ripped apart in the explosion, where the armor was weakest. It would have been instantaneous. Blink looked around, not at the carnage, but for something specific. He found it, and slowly, his legs wooden, made his way over to it. Blink dropped to his knees once more, like a puppet with his strings cut, and choked slightly. His hands were shaking as he reached out and lifted the helmet, cradling it in his lap. His sobs were choked off sounds, tears rolling down his cheeks and chin to fall onto the darkened T-visor of the Katarn helmet. “My brother,” Blink whispered. “My brothers.” His face contorted with grief, chin dropping to his chest plate. “My brothers.” He held the helmet, the head of his fallen brother, unable to stop the sobs that wracked his body. He didn’t know how long he sat there in tears before they finally started to subside. As his breathing started to settle again, he opened his eyes, gazing down at the familiar shape. He lifted it carefully, setting his forehead against the forehead of the helmet. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” There was nothing he could have done. He couldn’t have saved them. Part of him wished he had died too, he _should_ have died with them. He didn’t want to think about life without them, these men he had been born and grown and trained with. They were all he’d ever known, and now he’d lost them. This cruel, evil _fucking_ war had taken them from him. Just like it took so many others. So many senseless siblings’ deaths. Nearly the only family he’d ever had, gone.

He put the helmet down, slowly. Standing took effort, as his body was starting to register the bruises of being thrown several meters and slamming into the ground. Blink took a deep breath and looked back over the carnage. What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t complete this mission on his own. He didn’t know what lay ahead, and he didn’t have the expertise necessary for all the moving parts. He didn’t have enough information. He could report in, say what had happened, and as the sole survivor... what? He’d be placed in a new squad? RCs were born with their squads, grew up with their squads, knew their squads better than they knew themselves, and... he’d just get dropped into a new one. Just like that.

For the first time in his entire life, Blink had a choice. A real choice, a choice that only he could make. And once it was made, there would be no reversing his decision.

The rage was as unexpected as the scream.

Bastards. _Fucking_ bastards, there had been no warning for them, intel hadn’t said anything about this. No information that the enemy might have weapons of this kind, that they might be defended this way. And what would the army do? They’d pluck him up and drop him into some other squad, some other unit. No. He wouldn’t be just another interchangeable replacement part. He wasn’t going to be a cog in their fucking _bullshit _war machine. What would his brothers think? Blink didn’t know.

His squad was dead. And he had a choice.

Stay, and be placed in a new squad with people he didn’t know to face more horrors in a war he no longer believed in.

Or run. Let the army think he’s also dead, and go.

Blink went and found the missing chest plate of the brother who’d been first in line, and pulled the ID chip off of it. Then he pulled the other from the caved-in plate, and the reddened armor of the third. Finally Blink pulled his own ID chip off his Katarn armor, and stripped out of it. He wasn’t taking it with him.

He could go back to where they’d stashed their things. No one else besides them had known where it was. He could pick up his supplies there, spare armor, civvies, the few credits they’d been given for the mission. He dropped the chips into his pocket and, after a moment’s thought, pulled his DC-17 from the armor too. He pulled the belt over his shoulder so the gun stayed flat against his back. His knives were still in place, strapped around his thigh and tucked into either boot. Two up his sleeves. A ditch-or-the-wall blade on a cord around his neck, under his shirt. He could pick up a datapad somewhere once he was off planet, get anything else he needed at their supply cache.

No one would come for the bodies.

They didn’t come for clone bodies.

When no one from this Squad responded to GAR hails after 24 hours, they would be counted as a total kill, and that was that. Neatly sealed and tied with a bow, all their names—numbers—listed as inactive. He and his squad would be dead, and Blink could slip off into the sky with no one looking for him. Blink did one last check and looked forward, hesitating long enough for a deep breath.

He took one step, slowly, and then another. A third followed. The steps started slow, but gradually picked up pace, until he was running flat out. Tears were streaming from his eyes again, blown back by the force of the air against his face. Blink was running, away from the bodies, yes, away from the army, from his duty, this war, everything he’d been trained and raised to know and do and trust and believe. A small part of him was screaming to go back, to call, to return to the familiar, but as he got further from the site, the voice grew smaller and smaller. Blink was making the choice none of his brothers had ever been given the chance to make. He was getting the hell out.

**Author's Note:**

> Blink's former squadmates are ones I will never name or write about. It's too painful.


End file.
